by Ann Rule
Finally, Donna asked her why Rolf hadn’t responded to Ruth’s shouts to tell him he was wanted on the phone, and Ruth changed Rolf’s alleged location once again and said, “Oh, he’s over in Anacortes. I don’t know when he’ll be back.”
By the time Donna hung up, she was highly suspicious. Why would her aunt give three different explanations about Rolf in one conversation?
Since Donna lived closest to her aunt and uncle, she was the one chosen to keep calling Ruth. Ruth told her the story about her upcoming divorce, and explained that Rolf had gone to Norway with Elinor Ekenes.
None of it had reassured Donna and Joy. When they talked to their mother, Mamie, she said that Ruth had told her an entirely different story. Annoyed that Donna was questioning her so closely about Rolf’s location, Ruth told Mamie that Rolf was in Maine and that she was going to drive back there to get him. “I’ll show him to Donna,” Ruth sniffed, “if that’s what it will take to shut her up.”
In still another call to her oldest sister, Ruth used one of her other explanations about her husband’s whereabouts. “He’s in Greece—waiting for this to all blow over,” she said with just as much certainty as her other accountings for Rolf’s mysterious absence.
With further phone calls from Mamie, there were more excuses. “Rolf’s on a world cruise,” Ruth said, without explaining why he would have gone on such a trip alone. “He’s going to dock soon in Seattle. I’m going to bring him over to Donna’s and bring her a dozen roses, too, to apologize to her.”
By 1982, Ruth, in reality, was very angry with Donna Smith; she believed that Donna was the one who had told family secrets to the investigators. She phoned Donna on her birthday and said that she would be sending her “thirty dimes—thirty pieces of silver for payment for betraying me.”
Donna told the detectives that she was deathly afraid of Ruth, and what she might do in revenge. Hers was not an isolated instance of fear. Almost every friend and family member Clever and Keppel talked to eventually expressed an intense fear of Ruth.
In a way, it seemed ridiculous that anyone would be afraid of this plump, short woman with dimpled hands and a tightly curled old-fashioned perm.
But then, Rolf was still gone, and gone within a day or so of his first expression of trepidation about his wife’s dangerousness. Joy Stroup, Donna Smith, and Paul Myers were coming to the forefront of witnesses who would surely make an impact on some future jury. Ruth’s phone bills showed scores of calls back to Ohio and Illinois, and also to Donna, who lived in the Seattle area.
• • •
When Ruth finally ferreted out information that suggested Joy had given statements to the investigators, she stopped sending her money.
In October 1982, Ruth Neslund was briefly hospitalized. The Sheriff’s Office was told that she had suffered a stroke—which Ray Clever found was not true. Most people on Lopez Island believed she was at death’s door.
Fifteen
By 1983, no one but the investigators from the San Juan County Sheriff’s Office, the prosecutor’s office, and the Attorney General’s Office believed that Ruth Neslund would ever go on trial for the murder of her missing husband—or for anything else. Rolf had been gone from Lopez Island for three years, and she was still living at her Alec Bay home. She had apparently bounced back from her stroke, and was enthusiastic about her newest enterprise. One of the local papers wrote a glowing review as Ruth’s long-awaited business venture debuted. It was remarkable in that there was not one mention of Ruth’s infamy in the Northwest.
“Lopez’s First Bed and Breakfast,” the headline read. The large photograph of Ruth accompanying the article showed a sweet-faced older woman placing silverware next to a gold-rimmed plate, with a baroque mirror, a polished sideboard, and shining silver candelabra behind her, and a glittering crystal chandelier above.
The Alec Bay Inn had just opened, and Ruth Neslund was offering guests four “attractive and comfortable bedrooms, with queen-sized beds, and wood-burning stove in each. Two rooms feature private baths.”
There was a music room, a library, sundecks, and a “magnificent view of Alec Bay.” The pool that Rolf had once hoped to have completed in time for his siblings’ visit was now finished, still another attraction at Ruth’s new enterprise. Those guests who enjoyed the outdoors could look for driftwood on the Neslund home’s private beach, or explore “the lovely pastoral surroundings.”
Ruth knew what tourists sought; she had visited a number of similar establishments in picturesque settings around Washington. Every successful bed-and-breakfast had some kind of signature, or a “gimmick” to make it stand out. Ruth announced that she was featuring rare antique furniture in every room. She was considering adding an antiques store later on so that her guests could purchase items that would remind them of their visit to Lopez Island.
“I’ve always loved to cook,” she told the reporter, Betty Horne. “This project seems a natural for me, giving me an income and utilizing the things I like to do best.”
Rather than the token coffee, rolls, and fruit that many bed-and-breakfast homes served, Ruth offered a complete meal: “Eggs, hash browns, sausage, cereal, fruit or juice, homemade biscuits and bread, coffee or tea.”
In the first month after she opened her home to guests, Ruth Neslund seldom had vacancies. People came from all over the Northwest, California, and even England to enjoy the serenity and hospitality of the Alec Bay Inn.
Whether the notoriety of what was rumored to have happened in the huge home drew visitors, who could say? The house that was once home to Lizzie Borden has been a successful bed-and-breakfast. Some said that Ruth’s “gimmick” was not her antiques at all, but the possibility that a grotesque murder had occurred on the premises. Ruth Neslund was beginning to need a larger income. Her legal expenses were substantial.
Sixteen
By March 7, 1983, the witnesses, physical evidence, and circumstantial evidence that made up the case against Nettie Ruth Neslund were all in place. At long last, she was charged with first-degree murder, with a trial date yet to come. At her arraignment, Ruth looked like someone’s grandmother in her navy blue patterned blouse, slacks, and a dark jacket, her heavily lined face solemn as Fred Weedon helped her up the courthouse steps at the county seat in Friday Harbor.
At her arraignment, Ruth quickly entered a plea of not guilty. Fred Weedon asked to have her bail lowered from $50,000 to $10,000—to no avail. Ruth posted a property bond to cover the $50,000.
Finally, the macabre secrets that the prosecution team and the investigators had been forced to hold close to their vests for so long were public knowledge. Not only the San Juan County papers, but both the Seattle Post-Intelligencer and the Seattle Times featured front-page coverage, quoting the affidavit of probable cause.
What gossips had been whispering about for almost three years was apparently not that far from the truth as the prosecution saw it. Both Joy Stroup and Paul Myers had given statements alleging that they had conversations with Ruth and Robert Myers about the events of August 8, 1980.
The Neslunds had had yet another violent argument that day. The impetus for their last quarrel would have been Rolf’s discovery that Ruth had taken control of all his financial assets and was preparing to mortgage the home he loved. Ruth had claimed to Paul and Joy that Rolf had hit her. Robert Myers, their summer visitor, had pulled Rolf off his sister.
At that point, the state maintained, Ruth had grabbed one of her many guns and shot Rolf twice in the head as Myers held him.
The brother and sister were then alleged to have set about to get rid of his body and to hide all evidence of the crime. How they reportedly did that was allegedly far more gruesome than even the darkest speculations that had circled San Juan County for three years.
Despite island gossip, however, no meat-grinder had been involved.
Even so, to many, Rolf Neslund’s disappearance and the way the case was playing out was too bizarre to be true. And there were more T-shirts
and more dark humor. John Saul, the bestselling Lopez Island thriller author, penned an epic limerick about the Neslund mystery. Read aloud at one of Saul’s frequent gatherings for Northwest writers, it was hilarious because the case had become almost mythic.
Saul has a keen wit, and he is especially good at satire. His humor is the antithesis of his suspense-filled books, which are undisputedly chilling and not to be read at night when the reader is alone. New stanzas to the Neslund mystery continue to emerge from Saul’s facile pen every few months:
One night at the Alec Bay Innie
A drunk shot Rolf Neslund, the ninnie
While dear Brother Bub
Chopped him up in the tub
Ruth served a drink to friend, Winnie!
There once was a lady named Ruth
Whose problem was telling the truth.
She shot up her hubby,
Cut him up in the tubby
And now needs a pardon from Booth! *
There was a Lopezian named Ruth
Who tippled a little vermouth
She shot her man dead
And cut off his head
The judge said that Ruth was uncouth!
Some said the old lady was kinder,
Than one who would use a meat grinder.
Some said she stole money
But Ruth said, “That’s funny,”
Yet guilty was still how they’d find her!
Looking at the benign face of the elderly defendant, it was hard to visualize her participating in such a grisly crime. And the defense would certainly play on that.
After those who filled the courtroom for Ruth’s arraignment got over the shock of the specific allegations— much less amusing now that they were said to be fact and not mere speculation—they realized they had something else to worry about. The second-floor courtroom had been so jammed with people that the floor beneath creaked and groaned ominously. It was a lovely building, very old—antique, really. But the memory of the scores of people who died in the sky-bridge collapse of Kansas City’s Hyatt Regency Hotel was fresh in America’s minds.
Suddenly, everyone wondered if the San Juan County Courthouse would survive Ruth Neslund’s trial, or, more urgently, if the gallery watching might not be in danger. It seemed that half the population in the surrounding islands hoped to attend at least some sessions of this long-awaited trial. Were they all going to plunge to their deaths when the floor gave way?
They would either have to have a change of venue to another county’s courthouse, reinforce the San Juan Courthouse, or build a new structure. Surely, there wasn’t enough time before Ruth’s trial to do the last.
Somehow, the county found the money to begin construction on a new courthouse, and the march to judgment moved ahead ponderously as different motions slowed the proceedings to a snail-like pace.
Judge Richard Pitt would not be eligible to preside at Ruth’s trial because he had been the inquiry judge who oversaw the second search warrant on the Alec Bay house a year earlier. San Juan County had very few judges to pick from; it had never been a problem before because they didn’t have that much crime. On April 15, the county’s only other judge, Judge Howard Patrick, was disqualified when Fred Weedon filed an affidavit of prejudice. The Washington State Supreme Court appointed Snohomish County Superior Court Judge John Wilson to hear the case.
Ruth’s trial date was finally set: May 31, 1983. But then Deputy Attorney General Greg Canova—who would be representing the state—filed an affidavit of prejudice against Wilson.
Ultimately, the Washington State Supreme Court appointed Judge Robert C. Bibb, also of Snohomish County. Bibb had presided over trials of notorious defendants before—including the trial of Fred (now Kevin) Coe, convicted of being Spokane’s “South Hill Rapist,” as detailed in the late Jack Olsen’s book: Son.
Anyone following the trail of Superior Court judges could be easily confused. “Bibb” who was now the trial judge replaced “Pitt,” the inquiry judge.
Finally, neither side had any affidavits of prejudice left.
On May 18, 1983, Ruth appeared at a pretrial omnibus hearing where Judge Bibb would rule on which pieces of evidence he would allow into her trial. Not surprisingly, Greg Canova wanted to present virtually everything seized during the 1982 search of the Neslund home, much of it devastatingly incriminating for Ruth. Fred Weedon continued to be a strong advocate for the defendant, treating her with such deference that Ruth seemed as delicate and fragile as the crystal pendants on her prized chandelier. He asked Judge Bibb to suppress the search evidence, insisting that the team of detectives from the Sheriff’s Office “grossly violated” Ruth’s Fourth Amendment rights against unreasonable search and seizure.
Weedon was not convincing enough in his rhetoric. At the end of the hearing, Bibb allowed all five hundred pieces of evidence in, everything Canova asked for— except for some photographs.
Not to be outdone, Weedon filed a civil case shortly after the omnibus hearing. Ruth’s threat to sue became reality as she filed a $750,000 civil suit against the investigators. Virtually everyone on the search warrant team was served with a subpoena.
The newest date of Ruth’s criminal trial was set for August 1, 1983, three years to the day, less one week, after Rolf Neslund had vanished forever.
But the pace slowed again. Fred Weedon and his co-counsel, Ellsworth Connelly, appealed to the State Supreme Court asking for a ruling on a discretionary review. He still insisted that Judge Richard Pitt had not been a “neutral” judge when he granted the second search warrant. How could he have been, Weedon asked, since he had also been the inquiry judge earlier in the investigation?
There would be no trial on August 1.
What Ruth Neslund’s defense team was working toward, of course, was a complete dismissal of charges against her. If they succeeded in having the evidence thrown out of the trial, their next move would be to question whether Rolf Neslund was really dead. Not even a fragment of his body had ever been found.
Even though the A Positive blood that remained in the Alec Bay house was the same type as Rolf’s, Ruth was also A positive. Furthermore, Connelly commented that he could see no way to prove that Rolf had not cut himself shaving, had a nosebleed, or suffered a household accident.
Through all the legal maneuvering, Ruth’s trial date seemed farther and farther away. Aware that the courtroom floor had trembled as if the islands had sustained a major earthquake in Ruth’s 1983 arraignment, officials had condemned the building. As it turned out, there was plenty of time to construct the new courthouse in Friday Harbor before Ruth ever went to trial.
What appeared to be the final date was announced: May 1985. The courtroom had been reserved for six weeks, and trial was only a little more than a week away. The curious looked forward to sitting in the gallery, but there were those who thought it was time to just forget about Ruth Neslund and what she might or might not have done five years earlier.
A man named Marcus E. Bonn wrote a letter to the “Speak Out!” section of the Journal:
Dear Editor:
I find that our esteemed county prosecutor is now proceeding with the prosecution of Mrs. Neslund. I wonder just how much of a chance he has of convicting her of more than poor housekeeping? He is coming to court with no corpus delicti; it has taken a couple of years to prepare enough “evidence” to start the whole program.
He is going to try a woman for murder—can he get enough of a jury panel of people that hate her to convict? (People that are merely neutral will laugh at the case.)
As one of the county taxpayers, having seen what can be wasted with that guy that was shot in the leg [an earlier county case that cost $50,000], I wonder just how much more will be wasted here?
If Mrs. Neslund goes to trial, it will be another big-time waste job on our money. She can’t be convicted unless the jury is bribed or stupid . . . If convicted, what will happen? When you read the results of other trials, will it be “30 days with all but 10 minu
tes suspended?”
I say, let it drop. If Mrs. Neslund assisted her husband out of this life, she alone must live with it for her few remaining years. This trial will be a farce.
The letter demonstrated once again that the majority of laymen don’t understand the meaning of corpus delicti, believing that a murder case without a human corpse is no case at all. It was no wonder that the San Juan County sheriff’s investigators had to work hard to keep up their morale and belief in justice. It had been five years—no one seemed to care anymore about a trial, except to worry that it would raise taxes.
And, somehow, the fact that Ruth was a female seemed to make her a pitiful target, one incapable of doing any real harm.
Nevertheless, both sides were ready to go to court in August 1985. But then Ruth suffered what the defense said was a terrible fall; she broke her hip.
A courthouse regular walked beside Fred Weedon as he left the courtroom, having been granted one more delay. Sotto voce, the man commented, “All you have to do now, Fred, is see that she breaks her other leg.”
Seventeen
The latest trial deadline was Monday, October 28, 1985, but no one seemed to believe it would happen—not even Ruth Neslund herself. It had been so long, and her new life revolved around her successful Alec Bay Inn. Ruth admitted to a Post-Intelligencer reporter that she, too, felt as though she was only a spectator at a theater production. She was sixty-five now, but looked older, walking unsteadily with a four-footed cane, mentioning that her “stroke” had left her “legally blind.”
“I still don’t believe I’m involved in it,” she said with apparent amazement. “It’s like watching a bad movie. I don’t really know how a thing like this can get snowballing—except it did, with some relatives who have never been very close to me.”
With tears brimming in her eyes, Ruth said she felt that Rolf had probably committed suicide, explaining how depressed he had been after being responsible for his ship hitting the bridge. “Although,” she whispered, “there are some days when I think he’s going to walk up the driveway.”